


Baby Face

by Hyperspacial



Category: Love Island (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26379295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyperspacial/pseuds/Hyperspacial
Summary: Noah and Bobby have started dating after the show and now live together. I got an ask on tumblr about if they'd get a pet, so here's a ficlet explaining how they got their cat.
Relationships: Bobby McKenzie/Noah
Kudos: 8





	Baby Face

It was dark by the time Noah got home. He knew the days would be getting shorter, but the darkness still seemed to invade the sky far too early. He left the library at the same time he always did, but had to turn on his headlights. The evening was practically over before it’d even started.  
Shouldering his way through the door, Noah glanced at the dark living room and craned his neck to try and see into the kitchen, “Bobby?”. It wasn’t a huge interruption to their schedule, just that Bobby would often be camped out on the couch around the time Noah came home. He set his briefcase down on the couch. The cat came running as she had taken to doing for the last month, and Noah crouched to scratch her back before calling his name again. Bobby didn’t respond, but surely he was home already. Noah wandered into the kitchen where Bobby was perched on the counter, brow furrowed in concentration as he clicked away at something on his computer.

“You know, it’d be a lot easier if you hooked up that mouse I got you,” Noah teased. He didn’t actually care, but Bobby would struggle for twice as long trying to use that trackpad than go retrieve the wireless mouse Noah’d put in their office. He walked across the room, starting to lean behind the table where Bobby sat when Bobby suddenly slammed his laptop closed.

“Don’t look! It’s not- well I guess it can be done.” Bobby looked up at Noah, who had a surprised and maybe bemused look on his face. Noah leaned in for a kiss, and Bobby stood suddenly, taking his hand. Noah’s finger laced into Bobby’s as he quietly let himself be pulled back into the living room.

“Just sit, for a minute, here-” Bobby reopened the laptop while standing, balancing it on his knee and swaying on one foot. He lurched to the left suddenly and almost dropped it, trying to click something on that damn trackpad.

“Babe, sit down.” Noah started, patting the sofa beside him.

“No I just gotta, here-” Bobby tossed the laptop onto the coffee table making Noah wince at the roughness on his electronics. Sure the thing was old, but he’d never understand how carelessly Bobby treated it. Bobby fiddled with the TV until it lit up to an input screen,

Noah just watched with a quiet smirk on his face as Bobby clicked away on the laptop. After a few minutes, the tv’s blue screen flashed white with the text ‘For Your Consideration’ before returning the blue. Bobby swore, “I just disconnected- hang on.” Noah laughed and pulled the cat into his lap after she jumped onto the couch. As she settled into his lap, he gazed adoringly at his flustered lover. Noah still hadn’t a clue what was going on, but whenever Bobby got invested in something his passion was contagious. He’s still the most dedicated and eager person Noah had ever met.

Bobby finally got the screen back. It was a simple powerpoint presentation, with a white background and black arial text. He quickly clicked present to hide the slide preview, but Noah had caught a hint of what was to come- what looked like a large selfie of Bobby holding the cat.

Bobby put the computer down again and stood awkwardly to the left of the screen, pulling at the bottom of his shirt. “Ok so. I know we’ve had this conversation a bunch of time, but I have more to say. Please don’t interrupt, there will be time at the end for questions.” Noah grinned widely and held his hands up in a relinquishing gesture. That was met by a loud meow from the cat, demanding he return his hands to petting her. He did, smiling down at her before looking up again.

Bobby stepped forward and pressed the arrow key, and the next slide was blank save for big text that read

I know you’re probably wondering what this is all about.

Well, simply put.

Bobby paused, standing and staring at Noah for far longer than reading the screen would take. Noah glanced between him and the text a few times before offering Bobby an encouraging nod. Bobby clicked again.

A picture of the cat filled the screen. She was laying on her back on the table, with Bobby bending over her and taking the selfie from above. Noah started to say that she wasn’t allowed on the table but remembered the ‘no questions’ rule and closed his mouth with a grin. It looked like Bobby had taken it earlier that day, as he was wearing the same shit, but the light coming in from the window was too bright to be after 5pm. Did Bobby come home early just to make this?

After solemnly staring at Noah for a minute with the picture on the screen, Bobby clicked to the next slide and read off the bullet pointed list.

“Here are the reasons we need to officially decide Baby is staying with us,”

“Baby? We haven’t-”

“No questions until the end. Number one, she’s basically already ours. Number two, she picked us. Number three, all of your reasons don’t apply anymore. Number four, come on, look at that face.”

He clicked to the next screen and it was another photo of the cat in the same position as the first. Bobby had leaned down closer to her while taking the picture, and she was now biting at the dreadlock hanging in her face. Noah smiled brightly.

“So number one.”

The next slide was a full screen picture that Bobby must’ve taken on a weekend at some point, because it was Noah in his sweats napping on the couch. The cat had climbed onto his chest and was also napping, tucked up against Noah’s chin.

“Baby is basically ours already. She’s been here for two and a half months, she’s an indoor cat, we’ve gotten her everything she needs. She’s ours. You keep saying we need to look for her owner, but there wasn’t any microchip and no one answered your ad. At some point we have to accept that even though she clearly was a housecat, no one is looking for her. You keep saying we need to post new ads and put up posters, but I don’t see you doing that. So she’s ours. You know that, I know that, she deserves to know that.”

“She’s a cat-”

“And she knows that you won’t give her a name! You keep saying this is temporary but it’s really not. It’s time to make it official, name her, and let me post about her on instagram! People have been asking and I’ve been patient with your ‘don’t say anything until we’re sure she doesn’t have an owner’ thing. But she doesn’t. You’re just in denial.”

Noah didn’t say anything, just watched Bobby reproachfully, so he clicked to the next slide.

The new slide had a clipart icon of a stereotypical house- square with two windows and one door- with an arrow pointing to it. “I don’t think I need to remind you, but Baby chose us. She saw that someone left the garage door open because he was running late to work. She saw our house and decided we looked nice and came in here without asking twice.” Bobby clicked again and, with a horribly dated transition, a clip art cat was placed into the house icon. “She surprised us, but she hasn’t tried to get out or run out the door if you leave it open. She wants to be here. Who are we to deny her wisdom?” Noah chuckled, nodding along.

“Finally” Bobby clicked again and the screen read simply ‘Limited Audience Participation, see the presenter for instruction’, “all of your reasons are bad and wrong and dumb.” Noah laughed loudly at that, blushing and trying to suppress a grin.

“So if I have this correct, your main reasons were that she could have an owner, that she wouldn’t be happy because we work, and that she’s an inconvenience to us. All of those don’t account for the fact that she’s been happily staying with us for over two months. She entertains herself during the day, I clean her litter box, she’s not an inconvenience. And as we discussed before, we’ve exhausted all our attempts to find an owner. No one’s posting signs about, she’s not microchipped. I know you always talk about some sad little kid missing their kitty, but that’s a strawman and you know it. So she’s not an inconvenience and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t keep her. Do you have any other bad and dumb reasons?”

Noah grinned, “she rips up all our toilet paper. That’s pretty inconvenient.”

“And you’ve gotten better at closing the door when no one’s in there! See, we’re adapting. She doesn’t rip up the furniture, let her have a little paper, as a treat.”

“What about holidays, Bobby? We can’t take a cat along to that trip to Thailand you want to do.”

“We have this magical thing called friends. Sometimes, if you ask nicely, friends will check in on your house and pets. We already have Louis getting our mail! He wouldn’t object to peeking in and making sure she’s okay. And even if we didn’t have, you know, people who can help us, timed food dispensers exist. Little Baby Face isn’t going to burn down the house if we leave her alone for a week.”

“Ok, can we talk about the name now?”

“No, I have a whole slide for that, hang on.” Bobby clicked through a few slides in rapid succession. Most of them were large pictures of the cat, but some had text that seemingly reiterated their debate. He stopped on a page that said in bolded, red letters “Baby Face is your fault.” Noah couldn’t help but gasp.

“My fault? How is it my fault? You chose the name.”

“If you’d let me name her when she first got here, you could’ve had a say in it. But it’s been two months of you calling her ‘the cat’. I had to give her nicknames, and now she responds to Baby. Don’t you? Hey Baby, hey lass, look over here-” the cat didn’t respond to Bobby, continuing to purr quietly on Noah’s lap.

“Well she’s not going to do it when you’re petting her.” Noah held his hands up, grinning smugly as the cat began to meow again, lifting her head. Bobby called her name again, and again.

“See she recognizes it-”

“She’s bothered because I stopped petting her.”

“No she’s- It’s not-” Bobby stopped and pursed his lips, annoyed. Noah couldn’t help but laugh. He loved the face Bobby made when he got frustrated. Nothing was cuter than his boyfriend with a vendetta.

“You said,” Bobby accused after composing himself, “that we couldn’t give her a name because we would get attached. Well we’re attached anyways and she needs a name. I’ve been calling her Baby-”

“You’ve also called her Princess and Sweetcheeks and Lass, why not one of those?”

Bobby scowled at Noah and crossed his arms, pouting. Noah couldn’t stop himself from laughing, which made Bobby glower even more.

Standing up, Noah picked Baby up and carried her to Bobby. She protested with a loud mewl, and dug her claws into Bobby’s shoulder when Noah handed her to him. Bobby didn’t mind, wrapping his arms around her and making soft kiss noises as he buried his face in her fur.

“Ok,” Noah relented. “We can keep her and she can be Baby. But you still have to clean the litter box.”

He leaned in and kissed Bobby’s cheek, then started walking to the kitchen.

“Noah.”

He turned, watching as Bobby let Baby jump off his shoulder and bristle on the ground. Bobby stomped over with exaggerated steps and sighed, “I love you, even though you’re being a bellend.” Noah grinned and leaned into the kiss, wrapping his arms around Bobby.

“I love you too. Even when you let animals live in our house.”


End file.
